Stored, Abandoned, and Junked Vehicles

A: The Traffic Division is in charge for when cars are stored, dropped off, left or junked in a place it shouldn’t. If it isn’t allowed to be somewhere, the division is allowed to remove it. Here are some guidelines:

1: A car or other kind of vehicles can be called “stored” at one place if it’s been there for 5 days straight or longer.

2: Deciding if a car is abandoned is a little more complicated. If a car doesn’t work, it’s more than 5 years old, and it’s been in one place for more than 2 days, it can be called abandoned. If the car is parked illegally in a public place for more than 2 days, it’s abandoned. If the car is parked illegally on private property (the owner didn’t allow them to park it there) for more than 2 days, it’s abandoned. If a car is on the side of a highway for more than 2 days, it’s abandoned. If it’s been left for more than a day on a turnpike road, it’s abandoned.

3: A car is junked if it doesn’t work and the registration on it doesn’t check out for one reason or another. If it’s on public property, it has to be there for 3 days to be considered junked, and 30 days for private property.

B: If a car is stored on a public road, cops that see it should try their hardest to find the owner and get them to move it.

C: If and when the cop finds the owner of the car, the owner has a bit of time (5 days) to actually go and move it, but if they don’t, they get a ticket. After that time, the cop calls for a wrecker to get the car off the side of the road.

D: If after a fair amount of looking for the owner, and the cop still doesn’t find them, the car will get a ticket telling the owner to move the car. If it’s been 5 days after the ticket and the car still hasn’t been moved, there’ll be another ticket put on the car and then a wrecker will come to get it out of there. Unless there’s a special exception, the rules for searching an abandoned or junked car is the same as for a stored car.

E: The Abandoned Vehicle Enforcement Unit is in charge of abandoned car calls. Cops can volunteer to go to an abandoned car call if there aren’t any calls holding and there’s still a cop left to take the calls.